The Importance of Self Motivation

This is something that I often forget about myself, mostly because I tell myself most of the time that I am lazy. Which arguably I am to an extent, although recently have become more of a morning person, I think it is the winter season that does this to me and not necessarily just Uni. The darker mornings are more welcoming for eyes.

Back to the point. I've been looking back and re-reading through some of my old blog posts, some from over four years ago now and its actually pretty easy to find a excerpt where I call myself lazy, but then I also stumbled across one particular post from March 2013 where I was clearly the complete opposite. I had completely forgot about this up until now too! There was a time when myself and another musician, Lucy Mearns were arranging practice sessions and then we eventually arranged our own recording session where I brought my Soundcraft Compact4 mixer into college, and an old laptop to use with it to record an original song that we had been rehearsing. 

It doesn't sound like a lot, but it's fair to say that we were both self motivated to do this and this was all extra curricular. I personally think it is important that I continue to do things link this. This was my way of forcing my self into music technology. I was still learning how to use my mixer at that point because I had only owned it for about a month and had briefly looked into methods of recording audio. It all feels so long ago now. The knowledge I have now regarding music technology is much more refined although, I am still learning some elements like synthesis.

My most recent acts encouraged by my self motivation would be the cleaning of the college piano that I mentioned in my last post, coming into college for practice sessions with the FE Students and most importantly coming into college to do work on my essays and sequencing work and then also working on those at home. I know there are other areas currently where I could do with a bit more self motivation to dive more into the subject, but it proves to be difficult when its not something I'm 100% interested in. At the moment for example, I have a short assignment that is due in on Wednesday to do with writing about the structure of a specific song relevant to the genre that I have decided to replicate with sequencing and then create a plan... I still haven't properly started it. I have work at 2pm today so I don't really have much time to work on it now, all I have done so far is chosen a song. I think this will end up being something I do on Monday. There really isn't a lot to it and that probably doesn't help my interest levels.

Once I have food, I might have a quick go at it today before work. One thing I have noticed with my self motivation is that most is for extra curricular activities, but that doesn't mean its not relevant to my field of study. I'm keen to build up my musicianship and be versatile with what I can do and what I want to do. Basically, I like to keep my options open.